Senate Chief Whip, Orji Kalu Marks 60th Birthday in Kuje Prison

 

Orji Uzor Kalu, Senate Chief Whip, a former Governor of Abia State, a renowned man of means, with his resources reckoned in billions, would today mark his remarkable 60th birthday in the disappointing ambience of Kuje Prison – and it is his 138th day in jail. If last year’s birthday that his aides staged for him in South Africa was a surprise, his 60th is surprising, writes Ikeddy Isiguzo.

The seasoned journalist's feature shared on social media platforms continues:

It has turned out worse than any scenario they would have contemplated. On a business trip last year, a “room service bash” was deemed adequate. The 60th was coming and until eight months to the event, all that could be listed were more reasons for celebrations. The disputed Abia North senatorial seat had become his. Rules were cast aside for the greenhorn Senator to be Chief Whip of the Senate, a principal officer of the Senate. There was a precedent in 2015 when Obong Godswill Akpabio became Senate Minority Leader for the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.

No problems were foreseen. Kalu was in the right party – the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC. He made a show of his successes, spicing them with promises of future gains for the party in the South East. His vacuous claims that he represented the zone often infuriated party members. His influence was enormous, according to him.

He still neglected a nagging matter, his case before the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC. Maybe he thought he had dealt with it. A shock awaited him.

Like Kalu, the case was making progress. Nothing appeared to be able to stop it, not even his status as a Senator of standing of the ruling party. He flaunted his association with the Senate President Ahmed Ibrahim Lawan, with whom he had been room-mates - during Kalu’s contested studentship at the University of Maiduguri - as if it was the shield from the darts with which EFCC has chased him for 12 years.

Kalu fled abroad in October 2018 when the matter came up for hearing. Papers that he filed, pictures of medical equipment plugged into him, media stories that he almost passed on never impressed Justice Mohammed Idris who wanted to go on with the case that had been making rounds of court rooms since 2007.

Then, Kalu was neither a Senator nor a ranking APC member. When he stepped into the Lagos High Court on 5 December 2019, he had new sources of confidence that the judge punctured with ease. If 2018 was a bad year, he cleansed it when he was turbaned Danbaiwan-Hausa (Gifted Son of Hausa Kingdom) by the Emir of Daura in President Muhammadu Buhari’s hometown. Could a titled Daura personality go to jail? Kalu had paid the President a courtesy call in his full regalia to celebrate his most recent achievement, an affinity with the President.

He arrived the court in the blaze of his glory as Chief Whip of the Senate, Gifted Son of Hausa Kingdom, but left from the court to the prison in Ikoyi, weeping chiefly as an orphan. He was later moved to Kuje, the prison in Abuja.

When Kalu’s 12 years in jail were pronounced, as if he was serving a year for every year the trial lasted, tears marked the beginning of a new life in nasty surroundings for him.

Kalu and his company, Slok Nigeria Limited, were found guilty of all the 39 counts, while Udeh Jones Udeogu, Director of Finance at Government House, Umuahia, during Kalu’s tenure, was convicted on 34 counts and sentenced to 10 years.

Justice Idris said EFCC proved the trio conspired to divert N7.65 billion from the treasury of the Abia State Government.

His rapid appeals failed. Kalu applied for bail on 23 December 2019 on the grounds that he needed medical attention from his herbalist and that his incarceration was affecting his work as Chief Whip of the Senate. The appeal failed. If it had succeeded, Kalu would have been home early enough for the Christmas festivities, and possibly resume at the Senate. Calls are already on for the seat to be declared vacant. There is a limit to which his university room-mate can delay an election for the seat.

A second appeal on 26 March 2020, on the jurisdiction of the court that jailed him, also collapsed. A victory would have been celebrated into his birthday.
Kalu’s birthdays had been thematic, suited to issues that he weighed as important. The scales were obviously his. Have you heard of someone farming on his birthday? What would OUK not do?

When he turned 57, pictures of him in a farm driving a tractor, then cutting grasses with his machete, were issued. He wore a straw hat and jeans. He later sat on the farm sands nibbling a meal. Families and friends surrounded him. Only OUK farms that way; well it was his birthday.

The main celebrations were in his palatial estate where he once hosted officials of the Confederation of African Football, CAF, on the wheels of the successes of Enyimba Football Club of Aba. Helicopters took his CAF guests to his Igbere home. He awed his guests with the party laid out for them. The extensive grounds on which they walked sent the right messages. 

Earlier birthdays were rehearsals for the 60th that he would now spend in no way that comes close to OUK standards for extravagance, all to make the point that it was not for nothing that he made his money early in life. We can only imagine what the guest list would have been.

There was enough opulence to behold even without seeing the private jet parked at the airport or the array of cars at his other houses some of them outside Nigeria.

Kalu has not accepted any wrong-doing. From jail, he blames political rivals for his travails. He said his conviction was used by those who could not stand his popularity to knock him off the 2023 presidential race. Kalu, at best a pretender to 2023, rates himself the main contender. He said rivals who knew he would defeat them jailed him.

Born on 21 April 1960 to the family of Mr. Johnson Uzor Nesiegbe Kalu and Mrs. Eunice Kalu, he grew up in Aba where he schooled. He was further educated in Umuahia, Zaria, and the University of Maiduguri, Abia State University, and Harvard. He became a businessman early in life before turning his attention to politics. Kalu was the Governor of Abia State from 1999-2007. He left PDP for the Progressive Peoples Alliance, PPA, and was its presidential candidate in 2007, and a Senator with the All Progressives Congress, APC, in 2019.

Kalu’s marriage to Ms. Ifeoma Ada Menakaya in December 1989 is blessed with children.

Happy birthday OUK, there must be something you can still celebrate in Kuje, easily Nigeria’s most modern prison.